Iuliia Gataulina. From the photographic project ‘A body of copper’


PLANETARY
EXTRACTIVISM




Investigating the condition of resource extractivism, the enclosure and alienation of planetary matter, and toxic ecologies





This research explores what happens to the Earth – specifically its waters and subterranean environments – under large-scale industrial mining. Drawing on international political economy, political ecology, geophilosophy, and Earth sciences, the project seeks to challenge anthropocentric, capitalocentric, and extractivist logics of human–nonhuman interactions and ontologies that shape them. Instead, the project seeks to think with and through the Earth, the movements and biophysical processes of its matter. The project integrates visual practices, including sketching, animation, photography, and videography.

This research is conducted within my academic project “Pluriversal Waters: Tracing Hydro-Ontologies across Colonial-Extractivist Assemblages,” funded by the Kone Foundation and hosted by the Politics department at Tampere University, Finland. Part of the work is carried out in collaboration with Natalia Batrakova.







Mining in Finland


The first part of the project specifically explored the rise of mining in Finland and the political, economic, and ecological contestations it provokes






Blog post “The rise of mining in Finland”, Alusta! (2025)






Public display of the exhibition in Tampere

  • Hirvitalo Centre for Contemporary Art in Tampere, 
    September-October 2025

  • Tampere University, February 2026

  • A community space Artteli, upcoming in September 2026



Hirvitalo Centre for Contemporary Art in Tampere
Tampere University
Online exhibition “Frontiers and Temporalities of Extractivism”

Earth under extractive capitalism


This strand of work focuses specifically on the planetary and material dynamics of extractive capitalism





 Photographic project “Exposed acid”

This photo series portrays copper mining infrastructure and a mining waste area. Prior to development, the film was soaked for several hours in water collected from a mining waste site rich in sulfuric acid.


Photo project, 2025
Location: Outokumpu, Finland





Photographic project “A body of copper”

The series follows a human body moving through the infrastructures of a copper mining plant – from underground tunnels to the ore crushing facility, and finally to the nearby waste area.



Photo project, 2025
On photos: Iuliia Gataulina. Collaborator: Natalia Batrakova.
Location: Outokumpu, Finland





Поэтический цикл «Непокорные ресурсы», Syg.ma (2025)




International symposium
“Vitality of water”


In May 2025, we organized an international symposium titled “Vitality of Water: Rethinking Modernist Hydropolitics and Ontologies” at Tampere University (in collaboration with Dr Ismaël Maazaz)





The symposium brought together scholars, artists, and activists exploring how water is ontologically and materially captured by statist, capitalist, and colonial powers, and how it can be rethought in its relational and agentic being.

Report on the symposium, published in Suomen Antropologi

Research-art collaboration



In this research project on planetary extractivism, we draw on both academic and artistic mediums of knowledge production



Article “Unearthing the Earth: Artistic Research on Socio-Ecological Contentions of Extractivism” (in collaboration with Natalia Batrakova), Alue Ja Ympäristö (2026)


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